"Paper Doll" was a hit song for the Mills Brothers

Mills Brothers

The Mills Brothers, sometimes billed as The Four Mills Brothers, were an American jazz and pop vocal quartet of the 20th century who made more than 2,000 recordings that combined sold more than 50 million copies, and garnered at least three dozen gold records...

. In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 it held the number-one position on the Billboard

Billboard (magazine)

Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...

singles chart for twelve weeks, from November 6, 1943, to January 22, 1944. The success of the song represented something of a revival for the group, after a few years of declining sales. It is one of the fewer than thirty all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) copies worldwide.

The song has been named one of the Songs of the Century

Songs of the Century

The "Songs of the Century" list is part of an education project by the Recording Industry Association of America , the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. that aims to "promote a better understanding of America’s musical and cultural heritage" in American schools...

 and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame

Grammy Hall of Fame Award

The Grammy Hall of Fame Award is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance"...

. It appeared in the films The Execution of Private Slovik

The Execution of Private Slovik

The Execution of Private Slovik is a nonfiction book by William Bradford Huie, published in 1954, and an American made-for-television movie that aired on NBC on March 13, 1974. The film was written for the screen by...

and The Majestic

The Majestic

The Majestic is a 2001 American drama film, directed by Frank Darabont and starring Jim Carrey and Laurie Holden. Written by Michael Sloane, the film features a supporting cast of Martin Landau, James Whitmore, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey DeMunn, Hal Holbrook, and Bruce Campbell. Filmed in Ferndale,...

and in the British television miniseries The Singing Detective

The Singing Detective

The Singing Detective is a BBC television miniseries written by Dennis Potter, which stars Michael Gambon, and was directed by Jon Amiel. The six episodes were "Skin", "Heat", "Lovely Days", "Clues", "Pitter Patter" and "Who Done It"....

. Four lines of it are sung by Rodolfo in the first act of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

's play A View from the Bridge

A View from the Bridge

A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller that was first staged on September 29, 1955 as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The play was unsuccessful and Miller subsequently revised the play to contain two acts; this...

. It is also referenced in stage directions of the third scene of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

' play A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire (play)

A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

.

The song was written in 1915 (although it was not published until 1930) by Johnny S. Black, whose greatest success would come with his song "Dardanella

Dardanella

"Dardanella" is a popular song published in 1919 by Fred Fisher, who wrote the lyrics for the music written by Felix Bernard and Johnny S. Black. Band conductor Ben Selvin led into the 1920s with his hit instrumental version of Dardanella. The song held the No. 1 spot on the U.S...

," which sold 5,000,000 copies in a recording by bandleader Ben Selvin

Ben Selvin

Benjamin B. Selvin , son of Russian-immigrant Jewish parents, was a musician, bandleader, record producer and innovator in recorded music. He was known as The Dean of Recorded Music....

 in 1920, and a further 2,000,000 copies of sheet music

Sheet music

Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

. Black died in 1936, six years before his second greatest success, "Paper Doll," swept the country.